A pretrial hearing in the case against accused LulzSec hacker Jeremy Hammond this week ended with the 27-year-old Chicago man being told he could be sentenced to life in prison for compromising the computers of Stratfor.

Judge Loretta Preska told Hammond in a Manhattan courtroom on
Tuesday that he could be sentenced to serve anywhere from 360
months-to-life if convicted on all charges relating to last
year’s hack of Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, a global
intelligence company whose servers were infiltrated
by an offshoot of the hacktivist collective Anonymous.

Hammond is not likely to take the stand until next year, but so
far has been imprisoned for eight months without trial. Legal
proceedings in the case might soon be called into question,
however, after it’s been revealed that Judge Preska’s husband was
a victim of the Stratfor hack.

According to the indictment filed in March, Hammond illegally
obtained credit card information stolen from Stratfor and
uploaded it to a server that was unbeknownst to him maintained by
the federal government. Months earlier the FBI had arrested
Hector Xavier Monsegur, a New York hacker who spearheaded LulzSec
under the alias “Sabu,” and relied on from thereon out to help
the authorities nab other individuals affiliated with Anonymous
and LulzSec. The feds say Hammond openly admitted to compromising
Stratfor’s data in online chats with their informant and unsealed
a three count indictment against him relating to hacking back in
March.

After Anons gained
access to Stratfor’s servers, they collected a trove of internal
emails and more thousands of credit card details belonging to the
firm’s paid subscribers that were released last Christmas. A
class action suit was filed against Strafor over the breach of
security, and in June the company settled
with its customers at an estimated cost of $1.75 million. Just
now, though, it’s been learned that Judge Preska may have a
vested interest in seeking a prosecution by any means necessary.

Among the thousands of Statfor client’s whose credit card data
was compromised in the hack alleged to be linked to Hammond is
Thomas J. Kavaler, a partner at
the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP and the husband
of Judge Preska. The archived document dump released by LulzSec
last year includes personal information from Mr. Kavaler that
suggests he was victimized in the attack and thus qualifies for
the class action settlement.

In a press release
issued under the branding of the Anonymous collective, supporters
for Hammond call for Judge Preska’s immediate resignation from
the case.

“Judge Preska by proxy is a victim of the very crime she intends
to judge Jeremy Hammond for. Judge Preska has failed to
disclose the fact that her husband is a client of Stratfor
and recuse herself from Jeremy's case, therefore violating
multiple Sections of Title 28 of the United States Code,”
the statement reads.

“Judge Loretta Preska's impartiality is compromised by her
Husband's involvement with Stratfor and a clear prejudice against
Hammond exists, as evident by her statements,” it continues.
“Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially
administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our
property, can be protected.”

According to Sue Crabtree, a member of the Jeremy Hammond
Solidarity Network and a witness to his bail hearing this week,
Judge Preska ordered the continue incarceration of Hammond on the
basis that he is a danger to the community and likely to flee the
country if released from holding. Crabtree notes that Hammond
does not now nor has he ever had a passport, though, and has also
since been added to a terrorist watch list.

“In the end, Jeremy was denied bail because he was deemed a
flight risk and more dangerous than [a] sexual predator. And yes,
if you are asking yourself if this was said, it was said.
Jeremy's legal team stated they would appeal this denial of
bail,” she writes on a Facebook group for Hammond.

After Anonymous went public with the hack of Strafor in December
2011, the internal emails from the intelligence firm were handed
off to WikiLeaks, who soon after began publishing the findings.
Among the information stored in the emails was documentation
alleging that law enforcement agencies spied
on Occupy Wall Street protesters and proof of an international
surveillance system called
Trapwire. Hammond is at this point likely to be the first US
citizen tried in a civilian court for crimes relating to the
whistleblower site.

Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
tells The Real News network this week that the denial of bail
is both “very disturbing” and “legally wrong.”

“The bigger story is what they've done in this country to
Jeremy Hammond, Bradley Manning, and what they have proposed to
do to Julian Assange, and that's really say that they're going to
come down as heavily as they can on people who expose government
secrets, whistleblowers,” Ratner says.